June 21, 2012 – WASHINGTON –Seventy-eight of the nation's brightest young engineers have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 18th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. Engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines will come together for the 2 1/2 day event. The participants -- from industry, academia, and government -- were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from approximately 300 applicants.

“Our nation’s health, quality of life, and security will depend on the engineering achievements of the 21st century,” said NAE President Charles M. Vest. “The Frontiers of Engineering program gives young engineering pioneers the opportunity to collaborate and share approaches across fields. We believe those interactions will generate new ideas for improving the future.”

The symposium will be held on Sept. 13-15, 2012, at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Mich., and will examine serious games, vehicle electrification, climate engineering, and engineering materials for the biological interface. Alan I. Taub, retired vice president of General Motors global research and development, will be a featured speaker at the symposium.

The following engineers were selected as general participants:

Pieter Abbeel

University of California, Berkeley

Andrea Armani

University of Southern California

Muhannad Bakir

Georgia Institute of Technology

Billy Bardin

Dow Chemical Co.

Halil Berberoglu

University of Texas, Austin

Alexandra Boltasseva

Purdue University

David Brumley

Carnegie Mellon University

Xi Chen

Columbia University

Gian Colombo

Carpenter Technology

Xiquan Cui

Qualcomm Inc.

Frank DelRio

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Zhiqun (Daniel) Deng

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Jennifer Dionne

Stanford University

Nathan Domagalski

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Ayman EL-Refaie

GE Global Research

Michael Escuti

North Carolina State University

Joelle Frechette

Johns Hopkins University

Yan Fu

Ford Motor Co.

Weiying Gao

DuPont

David Garrett

Broadcom Corp.

Brian Gerkey

Willow Garage

Sayata Ghose

Boeing Co.

Anindya Ghoshal

U.S. Army Research Laboratory

Jordan Green

Johns Hopkins University

Piyush Gupta

Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent

Robert Hampshire

Carnegie Mellon University

Jessica Harrison

DNV KEMA Energy and Sustainability

Steve Hartmann

Medtronic

Reed Hendershot

Air Products and Chemicals Inc.

Elizabeth Hillman

Columbia University

Jeremy Hollman

Aurora Flight Sciences

Mona Jarrahi

University of Michigan

Michael Jewett

Northwestern University

Suzette Johnson

Northrop Grumman

Anupama Kaul

National Science Foundation

Scott Klemmer

Stanford University

LaShanda Teresa Korley

Case Western Reserve University

Christopher Kruegel

University of California, Santa Barbara

T.C. Michael Law

Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers

Chunhao Lee

General Motors

Steven Little

University of Pittsburgh

Xiang Liu

Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent

Jason Lyons

Arkema Inc.

Brian MacCleery

National Instruments

Youssef Marzouk

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kristyn Masters

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Meagan Mauter

Carnegie Mellon University

Jason May

HRL Laboratories

Timothy McKnight

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Brett McMickell

Honeywell Aerospace

W. David Merryman

Vanderbilt University

Rahul Mital

General Motors

Mohammad Mofrad

University of California, Berkeley

Nathan Moody

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Elisabeth Nguyen

Aerospace Corp.

Nicholas Peters

Applied Communication Sciences

Desiree Plata

Duke University

Yadunandana Rao

Motorola Solutions

David Reeder

Cargill Inc.

Kate Riggins

Procter & Gamble Co.

Wallace Sawyer

University of Florida

Charles Schroeder

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Stephanie Severance

Cummins

Behrouz Shafei

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Leena Singh

Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

Shukri Souri

Exponent Inc.

Joshuah Stolaroff

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Tong Sun

Xerox Webster Research Center

Kevin Turner

University of Pennsylvania

Kimberly Turner

University of California, Santa Barbara

Chris Urmson

Google

Peter van Beek

SHARP Laboratories of America Inc.

Sergei Vassilvitskii

Yahoo!

Kuansan Wang

Microsoft

Kevin Wasson

Corning Inc.

Ulrike Wegst

Dartmouth College

Jianzhong Wu

University of California, Riverside

Miao Yu

University of Maryland

Speakers at this year's event are:

Matthew Gevaert

KIYATEC Inc.

Christopher Jones

Georgia Institute of Technology

Eli Kintisch

Science Insider

Ben Kravitz

Stanford University

Helen Lu

Columbia University

Arindam Maitra

Electric Power Research Institute

Rahul Mangharam

University of Pennsylvania

Richard Marks

Sony

Cory Ondrejka

Facebook

Zoran Popovic

University of Washington

Lynn Russell

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Jeff Sakamoto

Michigan State University

David Schaffer

University of California, Berkeley

Constance Steinkuehler

Office of Science and Technology Policy

Matthew Willard

Naval Research Laboratory

The organizers of the 2012 symposium are:

Kristi Anseth (chair)

University of Colorado, Boulder

Karen Burg

Clemson University

Li-Te Cheng

IBM

Michael Degner

Ford Motor Co.

Ali Khademhosseini

Harvard University

Sanjeev Naik

General Motors

Ben Sawyer

Digitalmill

David Sholl

Georgia Institute of Technology

Armin Sorooshian

University of Arizona

Sponsors for the 2012 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering are General Motors, the Grainger Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, Microsoft Research, and Cummins Inc.

The mission of NAE is to advance the well-being of the nation by promoting a vibrant engineering profession and by marshalling the expertise and insights of eminent engineers to provide independent advice to the federal government on matters involving engineering and technology. The NAE is part of the National Academies (along with the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council), an independent, nonprofit organization chartered by Congress to provide objective analysis and advice to the nation on matters of science and technology.